Traditionally, cellular communication devices are designed and programmed to operate on a specific carrier's network using a specific technology. Often times, carriers attempt to lure more potential customers to their specific carrier network service by offering unique services, features, and communication devices. However, this often frustrates users by forcing a user to only use specific devices designed and programmed to be used with the specific carrier's network.
In order to provide users with the flexibility of a communication device capable of operating with any carrier network, communication devices may be equipped with software defined radio based chipset modules, such as Qualcomm's Gobi® chipset. These software defined radio based chipset modules allow a communication device to generate, encode/decode and modulate/demodulate data signals within a programmable digital signal processor (DSP). The programmable DSP enables the communication signal to be defined by software to conform with the wave form, frequency and data packet requirements of any communication technology (i.e., GSM/UMTS v. CDMA). By re-programming the DSP to generate signals with different characteristics, the communication device may be made to generate a communication signal that is compatible with any carrier's unique communications network, regardless of communication technology being utilized by a specific carrier. Thus, a communication device equipped with such a software defined radio based chipset module may subscribe to any carrier for communications support.
While communication devices equipped with such software defined radio based chipset modules are capable of being programmed to operate on virtually every carrier's communication network, in order to operate properly on a carrier's communication network the communication device must also be properly provisioned for the selected carrier's network. Each carrier requires the implementation of a large number of unique parameter values that not only vary from carrier to carrier, but may even vary among accounts supported by the same carrier. This implementation is referred to as the provisioning of the communication device. Given the wide variety of communication device operation, available feature sets offered by different carriers, and large number of possible provisioning parameters, the efficient programming and provisioning of such communication devices is difficult to achieve.